Australian floods lowered global sea levels

The vast amounts of rain that fell during the Australian floods
in 2010 and 2011 caused the world's sea levels to drop by as much
as 7mm, according to oceanographers.

In 2010, sea levels mysteriously dropped by 7mm and stayed lower
than expected for a year and a half. Oceanographers attempted to
work out where the water had gone; they found it in Australia.

In most places on the globe, rain falls on mountains, runs into
rivers and flows out into the sea. But in Australia, something
different tends to happen. Rain that falls in the outback never
makes it to the coast -- it tends to collect in shallow inland seas
and evaporate instead.

As a result, when La Nina conditions and a pair of other
atmospheric oscillations teamed up and torrential rain began to fall across Australia in December 2010, the
continent's "expansive arheic and
endorheic basins" swallowed it all up instead, causing a dip in
sea levels across the globe as water that normally flows into the
sea was trapped in salt lakes to evaporate slowly.

"It is a beautiful illustration of how complicated our climate
system is", said John Fasullo, of the US National Centre for
Atmospheric Research, who detailed his findings in Geophysical Research Letters.
"The smallest continent in the world can affect sea level
worldwide. Its influence is so strong that it can temporarily
overcome the background trend of rising sea levels that we see with
climate change."

Fasullo added: "No other continent has this combination of
atmospheric set-up and topography. Only in Australia could the
atmosphere carry such heavy tropical rains to such a large area,
only to have those rains fail to make their way to the ocean."